FarCry 4 Thread

FC2 has some issues, but they didn't have anything to do with the setting in Africa. The environment was neat, it was poor gameplay decisions that made people dislike it.

 

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The main difference between FC2 and FC3 is that FC3 was designed for casual gamers. FC2 could stand some improvements and would have gotten them if it weren't for it's non-appeal to the casual crowd.

How many people here actually prefer automated takedowns and Simon Says screen prompts...in any game...to hardcore combat and controls? Forget this question if you have a console as the answer has already been determined for you.

 

I'm really not sure what you're ranting about. I own multiple consoles, and have done every generation from being a kid. Just because a game is on a console doesn't make it bad, and by avoiding them you're doing nothing but depriving yourself of some fantastic titles. This is coming from someone who prefers games to be more hardcore, I detest things such as regenerating health and control schemes where one button does all. I like unforgiving elements in what I play, hell I still regularly replay games like Thief 2 while trying to avoid being seen or knocking out guards entirely.

 

You sound really hardcore.

Ive completed both fc1, fc2, and fc3 - the npc's in fc2 were annoying at best... it didnt have anything to do with casual vs hardcore... it was simply badly designed in that regard. The enviroment however, was nothing short of amazing for its time.

 

It would be nicer if they did something like Just Cause 2.. That had the best of all environments.

 

PHYSX Snow balls? pls.

 

No the main difference is the team that worked on them and their goals. FC2 was released to console exactly the same as FC3 was. You can't improve a game design with just a patch, maybe a DLC but you can't change repetitive missions without actually creating new missions, dialogue, models and animations. That is why FC2 failed to attract the same attention that FC3 did, the rest such as malaria pills was just made the repetition tedious. FC3 actually got a lot of things right in comparison which should be obvious because it's a title that still gets discussed a year later unlike FC2 which barely got discussed a month later outside of rants.

 

http://youtu.be/sfR_HWMzgyc

 

FarCry 2's issues have little to nothing to do with the setting.
The terrible story, bland characters, awful voice acting... respawning check points, lack of a reason to explore the open world.
Breaking weapons (fun idea, but crap implementation), broken stealth AI... complete lack of friendly NPCs in the world.
Bland, rinse and repeat mission structure.

Plus side... it's a great looking game with solid combat.

 

Currently playing FC2 now. You're right, the npc's difficulty has nothing to do with hardcore vs casual, its simply broken, the checkpoints wouldn't be as annoying if they didnt have the hearing and sight of the creator of supermans race. And as someone whos playing this right now this is what annoys me most:

Im walking through the jungle and come up to a small canyon section of road, i hear the sound of an incoming mortar round, look up and get hit directly in the face by the marking round (yellow smoke) run back into the jungle and wait for the live round. That passes, so i make my way through to try and find him, thinking hes somewhere directly ahead as there is no other way for him to see me as i have solid cover on both sides. Long story short, mortar man is on the other side of a lagoon to the right so far away that he looks about as big as the No. 1 on your keyboard when looking through the scope of a sniper rifle on a 22inch screen at 1080p. He could see me coming through solid rock and can adjust his rounds to hit me directly when he cant even see me.

Stealth is broken and the environment is designed to make it near impossible to take a stealth approach by going through the backdoor or even coming from the side, those tricks only work on locked safe houses and checkpoints every other mission you're forced to go head on. Enemies can see through thick jungle and start firing at you (and hitting) when they're not even looking in your direction... they're face forward, their gun is facing forward, yet their bullets are going through them and hitting you directly.

pff /rant. sorry. But if you can persevere, its a great game otherwise.

 

Yes...you're right. I forgot about those damn mortars. They do find you beyond reasonable distances. And as you said, if you can persevere it's a great game.

I know I'm the exception and not the rule. For some reason I get a lot more immersed in FC2 than I could ever get in FC3. I'm not kidding when I say I've played the game start to finish at least 3 dozen times. I know both maps like the back of my hand and after logging so many hours have seen some pretty rare events that nobody else will see unless by chance.

I have to try and explain myself for no other reason than to hopefully get what I experience across through words alone. It probably won't work but I will try.

I don't care about the mission goals or the NPC's. They're just reasons to head out into the countryside knowing every person out there will be trying to take me out. I enjoy getting from point A to point B and the fighting that will take place along the way. I like the minimal HUD and plain Jane abilities (no super powers and such). The malaria and the guns wearing out is just a wildcard inconvenience to me. It interrupts my plans here and there.

I've played the game enough that I create my own challenges. Like accomplishing the goal without being seen at all. Or seeing how high I can keep my kill shot ratio percentage throughout the course of the game. For example, I learned you can take out two, even three enemies with the sniper rifle with one shot to the head if you have the patience to find the right spot and wait for them to line up. It's not easy but that's the challenge. And I think it pretty much mirrors a real life situation. Using only a silenced pistol can be a lot of fun, too.

The Shanty Town is tough to sneak into. So is the village with mud huts built into the side of a hill. The village sitting on pillars in the lake is also hard to infiltrate without being seen. These areas have so may enemies it's almost certain one of them will get line of sight on you.

I guess you could say I re-invented the game into something I enjoy instead of just doing the expected. Sometimes I deliberately drive right into a checkpoint to get chased by assault trucks and try to survive long enough to lure them near another enemy faction where a firefight will ensue. Meanwhile I bail out of my vehicle and take cover.

I also figured out you can rescue all the NPC's to get the full number of side missions just for the fun of it. The hardest mission to complete without losing your main buddy is the gold underground in the desert. I plant an IED in a helpful location and as soon as I complete the cellphone call I hit the remote button to detonate the IED and then come up with grenades and a flame thrower.

So I hope I explained things a bit more here. Sorry to knock FC3 so much. It just really disappointed me with all the automation and excessive money, hobbies, online side games, and fantasy elements. Not what I was expecting after playing FC2 for so long.

 

Not really a rant so much as trying to make a point. So do you really like having screen prompts tell you which key to press when it's time to press it? Do you really like the pre-recorded takedown scenes instead of having the freedom to attack any way you please (or at least have options on where to strike the target)?

I've been playing computer games since they were pretty much invented. In 1974 I played a computer game that ran off a mainframe. There was no screen. Everything was displayed on computer printouts. You typed commands on a teletype machine...the kind that reads punch cards. The game was invented by a fellow college student at the University of NH. It was called, "Star Wars" of all things. To this day I always wonder why that kid didn't sue Lucas for the title rights.

My first personal computer was a Commodore 64 in 1984. I have seen a lot of games in my time. I know people like consoles. They're convenient. Computers are more work and the hardware isn't standardized. But there was a lot of rich variety in the game controls, game interface, game structure, and so forth. In the past 15 years it has all started to distill down to a handful of styles.

I know it isn't ever going to be the way it was. The whole industry has sorted itself out and focuses mainly on what sells. That's business. But there was a time...before companies knew what people would like...when all sorts of games and experimental hardware flooded the shelves. It was pretty amazing actually.

 

I thought I'd made it evident in my post that I don't like those sorts of things, although I can put up with them if the game delivers in other areas. Both Battlefield 3's single player campaign and Resident Evil 6 come to mind as games that caused me to quit in short order due to what I felt to be tacked on QTE's. That said the majority of games I play don't have those sorts of things to begin with, and that includes the console titles I play. I really don't feel it's entirely fair to blame consoles for these things, after all they're simply supplying what people want. People are the "problem", regardless of platform.

I've been playing computer games since I was a couple of years old, in large thanks to having a brother ten years my senior. I'm well aware of how things have changed over the past 2-3 decades, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. Oh, and I had a Spectrum ZX 128K instead of a Commodore 64. Both were fantastic machines.

 

Spoiler

Bah! this ^^ 100%

And the AI almost seems the least 'buggy' i've ever played against, it actually seems that they are working directly as intended (bar the eyes in the back of the head thing), like the devs all think that us gamers are direct descendants of Hitler and deserved to be punished by frustration via our preferred pass-time, its engineered chaos at its finest.

i like getting them to chase me in their machine-gun mounted jeeps and then lead them off the main road where its more rocky and sand dunes, hold down mouse 1&2 to look directly behind you and watch as they come over a small dune, smack into a small rock and flip the jeep, the guy on the gun normally gets tossed out then crushed.

The problem with games atm, imo, is that the ai feels to much like targets rather than contributes to the game world. For me, FC2 lets me play along with it, FC3 feels like im only invited as long as i pay for all the drinks.

For me, whats missing most from games now, is Me, the player. I feel like im there to watch but not partake because the games acts as a special needs carer and treats me like a patient taking me along to the movies whos concerned that i'll miss all the 'good' bits.

 

I just re-read your first response. Sorry I missed the part about your hardcore preference. It's also nice to talk to someone from back in the day whose knows the history first-hand.

Do you remember getting a game and having to spend some time learning the controls? Remember keyboard layouts? MicroProse was big on those.

I have most of the games I ever bought. Right now I have a C64 and Amiga emulator with original games. I also have MAME (for arcade games). I have a dedicated Win98, WinXP and my current Win7 computers. The older boxes have the games that were written to run on them with all patches.

I tried the Xbox 360 a couple years ago but took it back after a week. It wasn't because I couldn't use the control pad or anything like that. I just found it unnecessary given what I have already.

And you are right, too. It's the people and what they want that is the problem. It's that big fat middle section of the bell curve that drives the market. People like me are on the extreme ends of the curve.

 

I had to laugh at what you said (Bold). I have taken to calling the new games "interactive movies" because that's how they make me feel. You "watch" the game and keep the movie progressing by doing the right things when prompted. There is participation but you are clearly not "in" the game as much as older games. Immersion beyond being wowed by awesome graphics is important in my opinion.

 

skyrim with guns

 

FC3 just felt static and just like a map to me from start to end, sure it was pretty but it severely lacked that unadulterated sense of being that FC2 just smothered you with from the very beginning. The musical score of FC2 lent so much to the game too whereas FC3's was just lacklustre sadly.

If FC4 has FC3's AI but combined with FC2's ambience and sense of being in a real place we'll have it made. And for gods sake Ubisoft reimplement the much missed hand held map, the map in FC3 was abysmal.

Let's look at many of the things that were excluded from FC3 that many of us felt made FC2 the experience it was...

Weapons that you never relied too heavily due to breakage meant you never ended up using the same weapon for too long. Picking up enemy weapons would normally mean they were already in a very early state of disrepair and made the player not only stock up on brand new weaponry when they visited gun shops but also used the weapon storage options found in unlocked safe houses. Your favourite weapon therefore was always close at hand and in pristine condition every single time you needed it and sometimes getting there was half the fun.

The whole malaria issue I'll never quite understand. You were a none native in a land filled with precisely these kind of dangers and diseases and the way missions were handled meant you not only helped yourself by getting pills to hold it at bay but you helped others in the process ie passports etc.

Having to retreat momentarily to remove bullets from your wounds or break bones back into shape was always a thrill rather than an annoyance. The animations were cringe worthy too. I thought it was a great feature.

Even so if you ever did take too much damage having reliable friendly backup that would drag your arse out of none friendly situations then have your back while you composed yourself enough to get back into the fight always meant you could pick up straight from where you left off.

Also with safe houses the ability to use your watch to set the very hour of the day you wished to set out into the world made planning say nightfall attacks on enemy camps using a silenced pistol all the better. I loved being able to run into a safe house and fast forward time to a time of day that suited my mood and I also got to witness that wonderful sunset/sunrise while I was out there.

With FC2 you could carry the weapons you wished and still have the ability to repair a vehicle completely on the fly whenever the need arose. Whoever thought that having the repair tool take up a weapon slot in FC3 was a good idea needs shooting.

That hand held map. To think no fps game in the genre before or since has used such an amazing feature and it was dropped in favour of a horribly cluttered multi coloured one in FC3 just depresses the **** out of me. Driving while navigating your way with one eye on the map was just pure genius. Never take the player out of the game unnecessarily is one law many devs seem to live by, FC2 proved this was the way to go and still does to this day.

 

I doubt there will be just mountains.. probably more like skyrim..